Photo credit: Hugh French
About
An interdisciplinary artist who synthesizes sculpture, experimental music, & feminist linguistic theory, Tracey Cockrell frequently collaborates with other artists, writers, & musicians. Fall of 2022 featured a solo exhibition of Cockrell’s work at Jane St Art Center in Saugerties, NY. Most recently, Cockrell’s work was featured in a 4-person exhibition at A.P.E. Gallery in Northampton, MA. In Fall of 2023, Cockrell was an Artist-in-Residence at Montello Foundation (Nevada), The Parsonage (Maine) & Ucross Foundation (Wyoming). Currently, Cockrell is the chairperson of the MFA in Studio Art at Maine College of Art & Design & recently served as visiting faculty in sculpture at Bennington College. At MECA&D, Cockrell previously served as chairperson of the sculpture department. A former professor & academic dean at Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA), Cockrell also served as chairperson of the foundation department, associate academic dean, & founding chairperson of the Low-Residency MFA in Visual Studies.
Cockrell’s work is currently on view in the exhibition “Tidal Shifts” at the University of New England Art Gallery. Cockrell’s sound art has been featured in alternative radio programs such as ‘A Different Nature’, ‘Fringe Audio’, & ‘Discreet Music’, & heard in live performance at festivals in New York, San Francisco, Oakland, & Seattle. In 2011, Cockrell directed ‘Poemophone: A Cacophonous Collaboration & Reading Series,’ featuring 3 days of live performance with national & international collaborators to compose with invented musical instruments. Cockrell’s sculptures & installations have exhibited nationally, including recent invitations to ‘Platform Projects/Walks: ecologies of the local’ at Speedwell Projects, ‘Read to Me’ at 11 Jane Street Contemporary Art Center, the Fall River Fabric Arts Festival, & ‘A Reflection on Water’ at Maine Farmland Trust Gallery. Cockrell’s work has also been seen at the MCC Art Gallery in Mesa, Arizona, Woodstock Art Association & Museum, Center for Maine Contemporary Art, the Fitchburg Art Museum, Boston Center for the Arts, ICA in Portland, Maine, Oakland Arts Council, the San Francisco Arts Commission, & WorkSound in Portland, Oregon. Cockrell’s work has been discussed in The Portland Press Herald, The Atlantic & Our Town, The Art Section, Sculpture Magazine, ArtNewEngland, the Boston Sunday Globe, WGBH tv’s ‘Greater Boston Arts,’ & Maine Public Radio’s ‘Maine Things Considered’, among others. Cockrell has been an artist in residence at Penland School of Crafts, University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, Fiore Art Center at Maine Farmland Trust, The Tides Institute & Museum of Art, Leland Iron Works, Hewnoaks Artist Colony, Oregon College of Art & Craft, & Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture. Cockrell has received grant funding from the Regional Arts & Culture Council in Portland, Oregon, Music USA’s Meet the Composer for experiments in sound art, & the Fund for Art Investigation & Research travel grant.
Artist Statement
Through my artwork, I explore complex relationships between language and landscape, psychoacoustics and subjectivity of place.
In addition to being a sculptor, I am a trained horticulturist. ‘Listening Walks’ are a regular part of my practice. I travel to collect field recordings and study the unique sounds of specific natural landscapes. Using this audio as a prompt, I construct sculptures using sympathetic resonance as a metaphor and as a means of sound propagation. I focus on the confluence of sound and vision, attempting to sound the thing described.
In particular, I am exploring the intersection of nature and technology by combining various natural materials with conductive embroidery threads and compact electronics to make functioning electronic speakers. By combining high tech with low tech, I am interrogating the physical (what natural materials make good membranes for moving air and translating digital audio files into airwaves that can be heard?) and the philosophical (our concepts of memory, fidelity, and non-human communication). My sculptures vibrate with the sounds of the landscape.
In a way, we can describe thoughts as rhythmic pulsations, and the way that we think is to leap from one rhythmic pulsation to another to create images, ideas. My sound sculptures and installations explore the origins of language, challenge the authority of language for making meaning, and invite participants to play within compositional strategies to make or disrupt meaning.